Updates and Stuff

Well hello!

How are you?? You are looking determined and stalwart, as always.

So, I just wanted to give over a few updates to some previous news and events, and go over something interesting. (At least I thought so).

First to the mentorships.? I have been talking with Jahirul Amin at CAVE Academy and he has offered to give the mentorships something of a home there, but we haven’t figured out all the details (we meaning me).? Two of the types of mentorship seem easy enough:

1.????? Group interactive sessions (fairly free form) where we can do drawovers, discuss, and exchange ideas, not unlike the stuff I was doing with the Rookies, a few of which can be found on my youtube channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WoT25yUajsE&ab_channel=PaulMellender).

2.????? Arranged one-on-one sessions.? These will probably be variable and limited to chasing schedules but we’ll get in what we can.

3.????? This is the troublesome one…pre-recorded content following various subjects and ideas. This will be a bit of a struggle as pre-recorded edited content hits two weak spots-I’m a terrible presenter and a lazy editor of my own video.? I am pre-internets age at heart and video presentation wasn’t part of my master plans as a youth so I’m a bit clunky.

I’ll send along updates and emails as things solidify.

Okay the other update.? As some of you know, I recently had some surgery.? No, not cheek implants and an eye lift.? Instead, I had 2 discs replaced in my cervical spine.? This had been a problem area for some time, likely originating from an injury in my early thirties (long story). In early 2018, I did something, like sleeping at an odd angle, (you know, hero stuff), and to make a long story short I ended up with parts of my right arm, chest, and latissimus dorsi with greatly diminished function and atrophying.? My fingers were numb for quite some time (yes, the drawing ones) and then for the next 5 years I had issues.? The muscles holding my shoulders in the sockets weakened and my arms would separate (especially when I slept). Gradually, my posture, from general fatigue and persistent pain, started to take a real turtle-like position and lose mobility.?

Prior to this I was always active and strong, and I was used to depending on this strength in various ways.? It was declining quickly.? Finally, in July my right hand (or as I call it “El Draw-o-latador”) started to weaken and dramatically tremble.? I had noticed my drawings were declining in precision and quality for some time but couldn’t quite figure out the issue.? But it presented itself definitively.?

It seems my control drawing had been declining for years, subtly.? I had been adapting techniques to chase the losses.? These contortions to fix the issue telescoped how quickly or polished I could work.? A trick I use while drawing is keeping an ongoing survey of my body.? It is hard to describe, but it is basically using a system of feeling or awareness as a type of proportion control and anatomical timing while I draw. But since parts of my anatomy were malfunctioning, not readable, or vague, I started to notice my anatomy and proportions were intolerably off.? It would take me forever to go from grungy sketch to somewhat less grungy finished drawing and it always looked wrong.

So, I had me a nice surgery.? It was actually pretty nice.? No real pain, and immediate changes.? My weak shaky hands were steady as a rock.? I am almost 2 inches taller (the only really important thing) and my strength is returning rapidly.? Today (this isn’t a humble brag, I promise) I was able to workout with my previous standard 300 lbs bench press weight.? My shoulders are stronger than I ever recall (no more falling out of socket) and on the whole I feel, in many ways, revitalized.

Pain is a terrible thing overtly and subtly. And due to this one fix, many other pains, apparently cascading from the injury at my cervical spine, have all gone.? This is the first time I recall having absolutely no pain.

My drawing precision has finally returned, and I have been able to leave aside, after a little work, the habits I had developed to cope with weakness and tremors.? I have noticed I can fully “inhabit” or “navigate” my body as I draw (especially as the atrophied muscle has filled and returned to use).?

I am trying to figure out better ways to describe this interactive, all-over, drawing support without going into technical detail every time I suggest it as an area to learn: “Don’t forget to lean on your somatosensory system and mechanosensory system while drawing it makes things waaaayyyy easier.” (This might be one of them there pre-recorded videos so I don’t have to describe it 800 times.)

After doing some painting over the last few days, I nearly found myself weeping (and again now as I type recalling) at the return of parts of my life I had largely understood as lost.? Speaking to the non-artists out there: losing your “touch” isn’t like putting aside a skill and preparing to retire.? Art pervades everything, and every aspect of what you do.? This is why artists are often a bit unusual in their habits.? Artists do live in a bit of a different sensory world and that bit snowballs downhill in many strange and foreign ways. ?To lose the ways to look and see, and think, and perform as an artist, and be aware of it, for everything to be dimmed and out of reach, is a terrible thing.

But, my powers are back, and I am surprising myself and remembering. It feels so strange to be back.